i'm new forumer and a newbie for arduino, my debut will be with a question, i bought Adafruit Shield Motor because I have to control 2 stepper motor, the question is: can I use digital pin on the board without female pin?

i'm new forumer and a newbie for arduino, my debut will be with a question, i bought Adafruit Shield Motor because I have to control 2 stepper motor, the question is: can I use digital pin on the board without female pin?

thank you

Which stepper motor and how fast do you need it to turn? H-bridges may be the wrong choice.

this is the motor shield , i have answered myself, reading the instructions i figured out that analog in is avalaible, but ex digital pin are busy! only pin 2 is useful!

next question is which motor i have to choose, my project is very similar to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW721M2XhXM - surely I need a stepper motor because DC motors is too quick, the table needs 2 motors, first for plane (less power) and secondo for tv sliding (more power), i have no idea wich tourque i need...

i figured out that analog in is avalaible, but ex digital pin are busy! only pin 2 is useful!

I don't know what you mean by this . Post a link for your source of information regarding the above statement.You can drive two stepper motors with the adafruit motor shield. Look at the library example called "multi-stepper"

What pins are not used on the motor shield?All 6 analog input pins are available. They can also be used as digital pins (pins #14 thru 19)Digital pin 2, and 13 are not used.The following pins are in use only if the DC/Stepper noted is in use:Digital pin 11: DC Motor #1 / Stepper #1 (activation/speed control)Digital pin 3: DC Motor #2 / Stepper #1 (activation/speed control)Digital pin 5: DC Motor #3 / Stepper #2 (activation/speed control)Digital pin 6: DC Motor #4 / Stepper #2 (activation/speed control)The following pins are in use if any DC/steppers are usedDigital pin 4, 7, 8 and 12 are used to drive the DC/Stepper motors via the 74HC595 serial-to-parallel latchThe following pins are used only if that particular servo is in use:Digitals pin 9: Servo #1 controlDigital pin 10: Servo #2 control

link https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-motor-shield/faq

this is the answer to first question

I tried many stepper motors from old printers but the resistance of coils is too low, this motors absorbing too power! theoretically if tension is 12v and resistance of coils is 6ohm, power absorbed is 2A!!! The Motor shield support 0.6A and 1.2A peak.. chip on the board overheat!

Don't try to drive motors that draw 2A with the Adafruit Motor shield because you will destroy it. Get a higher powered stepper driver. You won't find one in a shield that can deliver 2A per motor. You will need to find a non-shield driver.

Utter nonsense. alas, those figures only apply to the chip mounted on a water cooledheatsink, without any heatsink you won't get anything like that. Besides they are"absolute maximum" figures - you always allow a safety margin below absolutemaximum.

Someone really should update that page as its blindly quoting the values forthe heatsinked version of the chip (and the shield uses the non-heatsink version).

Assume 0.5A per channel as enough to cause the shield to struggle.

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anyone have an idea what torque that I need for my project?smiley

You'll need to provide some sketch diagrams with the mechanism and dimensions andweights for everything to get a handle on that. Friction in particular isn't easilyestimated. That video hides all the mechnical linkages which is what you need to do mechanics calculations.